The sensation of movement was brief, but the scene through the window was very different. Amorphous, it gave the impression of an unfinished painted stage set. Trees and hedges were there, the sky, sunlight, but none of them seemed real.
'Well, you wanted to get here, professor,' smiled Steifflomeis, 'and here we are. I think you called it E-Zero.'
12
The Petrified Place
Maggy White glowered at Steifflomeis who seemed very full of himself at that moment.
'What do you think you're doing?' she said harshly. 'This goes against ...'
'I don't care,' Steifflomeis shrugged. 'If Faustaff could get away with so much, then so can I—we, if you like.' He turned a light-hearted eye on Faustaff who had still not completely recovered from the shock of transition between E-3 and E-Zero.
'Well, professor,' Faustaff heard Steifflomeis say. 'Are you impressed?'
'I'm curious,' said Faustaff slowly.
Orelli began to chuckle and moved towards Faustaff, but was stopped short by Ogg's now somewhat nervous gun nudging at him. Ogg's expression had become resolute, but he seemed baffled. Nancy looked rather the same.
Orelli said sharply: 'Gordon! Put the gun away. That was a silly gesture. We are in the position of power now, no matter how many guns you point at us. You realise that? You must!'
Faustaff pulled himself together. 'What if we order you to return us to E-3? We could kill you if you refused.'
'I am not so sure you would kill us, professor,' Steifflomeis smiled. 'And in any case it takes hours to prepare for a transition. We would need technical help too. All our people are at the cathedral.' He pointed out of the window to where a spire could be seen over the tops of roofs and trees. The spire seemed unnaturally solid in the peculiarly unreal setting. Part of the impression was gained, Faustaff realised, by the fact that the whole landscape, aside from the spire, looked unused. 'Also,' Steifflomeis continued, 'they are expecting us and will come here soon if we do not turn up there.'
'We still have youv' Ogg reminded him. 'We can barter your lives for a safe transport back to where we came from.'
'You could,' Steifflomeis admitted. 'But what would that gain you? Isn't E-Zero where you wanted to come?' He glanced at Faustaff. 'That's true isn't it, professor?'
Faustaff nodded.
'You will have to be careful here, professor,' Orelli put in. 'I am serious. You had better throw in with us. United we stand, eh?'
T prefer to stay divided, particularly if you fall as well,' Faustaff replied dryly.
'This antagonism is unrealistic, professor. Cut. your losses.' Steifflomeis looked somewhat nervously out of the window. 'The potential danger here is great; this is an unactivated simulation—it's delicate. A few wrong moves on your part would, among other things, make it almost impossible to return to any one of the other simulations ...'
'Simulations of what?' said Faustaff, still trying to get concrete information from Steifflomeis.
'The original ...'
'Steifflomeis!' Maggy White broke in. 'What are you doing? The principals might easily decide to recall us!'
Steifflomeis responded coolly. 'How will they reach us?' he asked her. 'We are the most sophisticated agents they have.'
'They can recall you—you know that.'
'Not easily—not without some co-operation from me. They will never succeed with the simulations. They have tried too many times and failed too many times. With our knowledge we can resist them—we can become independent—live our own lives. We can leave this world only semi-activated and rule it. There would be nothing to stop us.'
Maggy White lunged towards Ogg and tried to grab the machine-gun from him. He backed away. Faustaff got hold of the woman, but she already had both hands on the gun. Suddenly the gun went off. It had been set to semiautomatic. A stream of bullets smashed through the window.
'Careful!' shrieked Steifflomeis.
As if startled by the firing, Maggy White took her hands away. Orelli had moved towards Ogg, but the tall Englishman turned the gun on him again and he stopped.
Steifflomeis was staring out of the window.
Faustaff looked in the same direction, and saw that where the bullets had struck the nearest house its walls were falling. One had cracked and was crumbling, but the others fell neatly down, to lie on the ground in one piece. The impression of a stage-set was retained—yet the walls, and the revealed interior of the house, which was now falling slowly, were evidently quite solid and real.
Steifflomeis turned on Maggy.
'You accuse me—and cause that to happen,' he said, pointing out at the wreckage. T suppose you were going to try to kill me.'
'I still intend to.'
Steifflomeis swung the pointing finger at Faustaff. 'There is the one you should kill. One of us should have done it long since.'
'I am not so sure now,' she said. 'He might even be of use to the principals. Not you, though.'
'No indeed,' smiled Steifflomeis, lowering his arm. 'You realise what your action might have started?'
She nodded. 'And that wouldn't be to your advantage, would it, Steifflomeis?'
'It would be to no-one's advantage,' Steifflomeis said, rubbing his eyes. 'And it would be very unpleasant for Faustaff and the others—including you, Orelli, as I've explained.'
Orelli smiled to himself. It was a wickedly introspective smile as if he looked into his own soul and was pleased with the evil he found there. He leant against one of the pieces of machinery and folded his arms. 'What you told me sounds most attractive, Steifflomeis.'
Faustaff became impatient. He felt that he should be taking some sort of action but he could think of nothing to do.
'We'll pay a visit to the cathedral I think,' he said on impulse. 'Let's get going.'
Steifflomeis was plainly aware of Faustaff s uncertainty. He did not move as Ogg waved the gun towards the door.
'Why would the cathedral be better, Professor Faustaff?' he asked lightly. 'After all, there are more of our men there.'
'True,' Faustaff answered. 'But we might just as well go. I've made up my mind, Steifflomeis. Move, please.' His tone was unusually firm. Hearing it, he was not sure that he liked it. Was he compromising himself too much? he wondered.
Steifflomeis shrugged and walked past Ogg towards the door. Orelli was already opening it. Maggy White and Nancy followed Ogg with Faustaff keeping an eye on Maggy.
They went out into the hall and Orelli pulled the front door wide.
The lawn and gravel path looked only slightly different from what they had left on E-3. Yet there was something hazy about them, something unformed. Faustaff thought that the feeling they aroused was familiar and as they began
to walk down the path towards the street he realised that, for all their apparent reality, they had the effect of making him feel as if he were experiencing a particularly naturalistic dream.
The effect was made perfect by the stillness of the air, the complete silence everywhere. Though he could feel the gravel beneath his feet, he made no sound as he walked.
Even when he spoke, his voice seemed so distant that he had the impression its sound carried around the whole planet before it reached his ears.
'Does that street lead to the cathedral?' he asked Steifflomeis, pointing to the street at the bottom of the lawn.
Steifflomeis's lips were tight. His eyes seemed to express some kind of warning as he turned and nodded at Faustaff.
Orelli appeared more relaxed. He also turned his head while he walked jauntily towards the street. 'That's the one, professor,' he said. His voice sounded far away, too, although it was perfectly audible.
Steifflomeis looked nervously at his partner. To Faustaff it seemed that Steifflomeis was privately wondering if he had made a mistake in joining forces with Orelli. Faustaff had known Orelli much longer than Steifflomeis and was well aware that the ex-cardinal was at best a treacherous and neurotic ally, given to moods that seemed to indicate a strong death-wish a
nd which led him and anyone associated with him into unnecessary danger.
Wanting something to happen, something he could at least try to deal with, Faustaff almost welcomed Orelli's mood.
They reached the street. Cars were parked there. They were new and Faustaff recognised them as the latest on E-l. Evidently, whoever created these 'simulations' didn't start from scratch.
There was no-one about. E-Zero seemed unpopulated. Nothing lived. Even the trees and plants gave the impression of lifelessness.
Orelli stopped and waved his arms shouting. 'They're here, professor! They must have heard the shots. What are you going to do now?'
Turning a corner came about a dozen of Orelli's brigandly gang, their laser-rifles ready in their hands.
Faustaff bellowed; 'Stop! We've got Steifflomeis and Orelli covered!' He felt a bit self-conscious, then, and looked at Ogg, feeling he was better able to take the initiative.
Ogg said nothing but he straddled his legs slightly and moved his machine gun a little. His expression was abnormally stern. Orelli's men stopped.
'What are you going to do now Faustaff?' Orelli repeated.
Faustaff glanced at Ogg again but Ogg apparently refused to meet his gaze. There was a big hovercar close by. Faustaff contemplated it.
Steifflomeis said softly: 'It would be unwise to do anything with the automobile. Please professor, don't use any of the things you find here.'
'Why not?' Faustaff asked in the same tone.
'To do so could trigger a sequence of events that would snowball until nobody could control them. I'm speaking the truth. There is a ritual involved—every simulation has its ritual before it becomes completely activated. The gun going off doesn't appear to have had any result—but starting a car could begin the initial awakening ...'
'I'll kill him if you come any closer!'
Ogg was talking to Orelli's men who had begun to stir. He was pointing the gun directly at Orelli, Steifflomeis apparently forgotten. The normally stoical Ogg now seemed to be under stress. He must have hated Orelli for a long time, Faustaff reflected. Or perhaps he hated what Orelli represented in himself. It was quite plain to them all that Ogg hoped to kill Orelli.
Only Orelli himself seemed relaxed, grinning at Ogg. Ogg frowned now, sweating. His hands shook.
'Gordon!' Faustaff said desperately. 'If you kill him, they'll start shooting.'
'I know,' Ogg replied, and his eyes narrowed.
Behind them Maggy White had started to run up the road, away from Orelli's men. Steifflomeis was the only one to turn his head and watch her, his face thoughtful.
Faustaff decided to go to the car. He gripped the door handle. He pressed the button and the door opened. He noticed that the keys were in the ignition. 'Keep them covered Gordon,' he said as he got into the driving seat. 'Come on, Nancy.'
Nancy followed him, sitting next to him.
'Gordon!' he called. He started the engine. He realised that he hadn't considered the possibility that the car wouldn't work. The motor began to turn over.
Faustaff called to Ogg again and was relieved to see that he was edging towards the car. Nancy opened the back door for him and he slid in. His gun was still pointing directly at Orelli.
Faustaff touched a button. The car rose on its air-cushion and they began to move down the road, slowly at first.
One shot came from a laser rifle..The beam went high.
Faustaff put his foot down, hearing Steifflomeis order the men to stop firing.
'Faustaff!' Steifflomeis yelled, and although they were now some distance away he could hear him perfectly. 'Faustaff—you and your friends will suffer most from this!'
They passed Maggy White on the way, but they didn't stop for her.
13
The Time Dump
As Faustaff drove into downtown Los Angeles he realised that everything was not as normal as he had thought. Much of the area was unfinished, as if work on the 'simulation' had been abandoned or interrupted. Houses were intact, stores bore familiar signs—but every so often he would pass something that clashed with the effect.
A tree in a garden, for instance, was recognisable as a Baiera tree with sparse, primitive foliage. The tree had flourished during the Jurassic, up to 180 million years in the past. A block that Faustaff remembered as having once been taken up with a big movie theatre was now a vacant lot. On it were pitched Indian wigwam's reminiscent of those that had been used by the Western plains Indians. The whole appearance of the settlement did not give the impression of its having been built as an exhibit. Elsewhere were wooden houses of a style typical of three centuries earlier, a brand new 1908 Model T Ford with gleaming black enamel, brass fittings, and wheel-spokes picked out in red. A store window displayed women's fashions of almost two hundred years before.
Although, in general appearance, the city was the modern Los Angeles of 1999 on E-l, the anachronisms were plentiful
and easily noticed standing out in sharp contrast to everything else. They added to Faustaff s impression that he was dreaming. He began to experience vague feelings of fear and he drove the car away very fast, heading towards Hollywood for no other reason than because that was where the highway was leading him.
Nancy Hunt gripped his arm. Evidently close to hysteria herself, she tried to comfort him. 'Don't worry, Fusty,' she said. 'We'll get out of this. I can't even believe it's real.'
'It's real enough,' he said, relaxing a little. 'Or at least the threat is. You just can't—I don't know—get to grips with the place. There's something basically intangible about it—the houses, the street, the scenery—it isn't one thing or another.' He addressed Gordon Ogg who was still grim-faced, hugging his machine gun to him, eyes hooded.
'How do you feel, Gordon?'
Ogg moved in his seat and looked directly at Faustaff whose head was half-turned towards him. Faustaff saw that there were tears in Ogg's eyes.
'Uncomfortable,' Ogg replied with some effort. 'It's'not just the scenery—it's me. I can't seem to control my emotions—or my mind. I feel that this world isn't so much unreal as ...' he paused. 'It's a different quality of reality, perhaps. We are unreal to it—we shouldn't be here. Even if we had a right to be here, we shouldn't be behaving as we are. It's our state of mind, if you like. That's what's wrong—our state of mind, not the place.'
Faustaff nodded thoughtfully. 'But do you think you'd be willing to enter the state of mind you feel this world demands?'
Ogg hesitated. Then he said: 'No I don't think so.'
'Then I know what you mean,' Faustaff went on. 'I'm going through the same thing. We've got to try to hang on, Gordon—this world wants us to alter our identities. Do you want to alter your identity?'
'No.'
'Do you mean personality?' Nancy asked. 'That's the feeling I've got—that at any moment if I relax enough I just wouldn't be me any more. It's like dying, almost. A sort of dying. I feel that something of me would be left but it would be—naked ...'
Their attempts to express and analyse their fears had not helped. Now the atmosphere in the car was one of terror—they had brought their fears to the surface and they were unable to control them.
The car rushed down the highway, carrying a frightened cargo. Above them, the featureless sky added to their impression that time and space as they knew it no longer existed, that they no longer possessed a fragment of potential influence over their situation.
Faustaff tried to speak again, to suggest that perhaps after all they should turn round and throw themselves on Steifflomeis's mercy, that he at least would have an explanation of what was happening to them, that they might accept his suggestion of their combining forces with him until they saw an opportunity of escaping from E-Zero.
The words that came out of his mouth held no meaning for him. The other two did not hear him, it seemed.
Faustaffs large hands shook violently on the steering wheel. He barely resisted the urge to let the car crash.
He drove on a while longer an
d then, with a feeling of hopelessness, stopped the car suddenly. He leaned over the steering wheel, his face contorted, his mouth gibbering while another part of his mind sought the core of sanity that must still be within him and which might help him resist the identity-sapping influence of E-Zero.
Did he want to resist? The question kept entering his mind. At length, in trying to answer, he recovered partial sanity. Yes, he did—at least, until he understood what he was resisting.
He looked up. There were no houses in the immediate vicinity. There were some seen in the distance behind and
ahead of him, but here the highway went across sparse grassland. It looked like a site that had been levelled for development and then left. What caught his eye, however, was the dump.
At first glance it looked like a garbage dump, a huge hill of miscellaneous junk.
Then Faustaff realised that it wasn't junk. All the objects looked new and whole.
On impulse he got out of the car and began to work towards the vast heap.
As he got closer he could see that it was even bigger than he had first thought. It rose at least a hundred feet above him. He saw a complete Greek Winged Victory in marble; a seventeenth century arquebus, gleaming oak, brass and iron; a large Chinese kite painted with a dragon's head in brilliant primary colours. A Fokker Triplane of the type used in the 1914-18 war lay close to the top, its wood and canvas as new as the day it left its factory. There were wagon wheels and what looked like an Egyptian boat; a throne that might have belonged to a Byzantine Emperor; a big Victorian urn bearing a heavy floral pattern; an Indian elephant howdah; a stuffed Timber Wolf; a sixteenth century arbalest—a crossbow made of steel; a late eighteenth century electric generator; a set of Japanesee horse armour on a beautifully carved wooden horse, and a North African drum; a life-sized bronze statue of a Sinhalese woman; a Scandinavian rune stone and a Babylonian obelisk.
All history seemed to have been piled together at random. It was a mountain of treasure, as if some mad museum curator had found a way of up-ending his museum and shaking its contents out on to the ground. Yet the artifacts did not have the look of museum-pieces. Everything looked absolutely new.
The Rituals of Infinity Page 10
